Continuing from the book ‘The Holy Spirit,’ (see previous post, ‘From Belief to Knowledge’) Robert L. Millet wrote:
“Believing is seeing. A person being born of the Spirit believes the words of inspired spokesmen (Mosiah 5:2, Alma 18:23, 22:7). Inquires become more sincere (compare Alma 11:26-39 with 12:7-8) Whereas an unregenerated person is cynical, a spiritual, reborn person is a believer. Whereas a worldly person demands physical proof, the spiritual person enjoys the measure of trust and divine patience that allows the Lord the prerogative to do his own work in his own time. The Lord calls us not to gullibility but to patience. The earnest seeker after truth must have a willing suspension of disbelief in order to have the truth confirmed to his or her heart. “Search diligently,” the Redeemer implored in modern revelation, “pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good, if ye walk uprightly and remember the covenant wherewith ye have covenanted one with another. (Doctrine & Covenants 90:24).
. . . . To be born again is to gain a heightened sensitivity to things that matter. In writing of the person who has been born of the Spirit, Elder Parley P. Pratt explained: “His mind is quickened, his intellectual faculties are aroused to intense activity. He is, as it were, illuminated. He learns more of divine truth in a few days, than he could have learned in a lifetime in the best merely human institutions in the world.7
For example, since the Lord works with members of the Church through consciences, to be born again is to gain deeper sensitivity to right and wrong, to enjoy greater manifestations of the gift of discernment, to develop more refined and educated desires. Since being born again consists of being adopted into the royal family and thus gaining godly attributes and qualities, experiencing new birth entails feeling a deeper compassion and empathy for those who are poor, who mourn or suffer or reach out for succor. The quickening in the inner man peels away the film and facade of sin; makes unnecessary the rigors and taxing labors of duplicity; allows the spiritually initiated to see clearly and sharply so as to sift and sort out the sordid or even the subsidiary. Those born of the Spirit have a spiritual priority and thus less inclination to labor in secondary causes and a consuming but patient passion to occupy themselves in that which brings light and life and love. They come to pleasure the simple pleasures of life and rejoice in the goodness of their God. Joseph Smith taught that “the nearer a man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desire for sin.”8 ~From Robert L. Millet’s book ‘The Holy Spirit’ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019) p. 220-21
7. In Journal of Discourses, 11:23
8. In Whitney, Life of Heber C. Kimball, 22-23
